I chose the speediest, naturally.  She was a four cylinder Napier, given by a Mrs. Herbert Davies to the Red Cross at the beginning of the war (vide small brass plate affixed), and converted from her private car into an ambulance.  She had been in the famous old Dunkirk Convoy in 1914, and was battle-scarred, as her canvas testified, where the bullets and shrapnel had pierced it.  She had a fat comfortable look about her, and after I had had her for some time I felt “Susan” was the only name for her; and Susan she remained from that day onwards.  She always came up to the scratch, that car, and saved my life more than once.

We snatched what minutes we could from work to do our “cues,” as we called our small huts.  It was a great pastime to voyage from hut to hut and see what particular line the “furnishing” was taking.  Mine was closed to all intruders on the score that I had the “painters in.”  It was to be art nouveau.  I found it no easy matter to get the stuff on evenly, especially as I had rather advanced ideas as to mural decoration!  With great difficulty I stencilled long lean-looking panthers stalking round the top as a sort of fresco.  I cut one pattern out in cardboard and fixing it with drawing pins painted the Ripolin over it, with the result that I had a row of green panthers prowling round against a background of French grey!  I found them very restful, but of course opinions differ on these subjects.  Curtains and cushions were of bright Reckitt’s blue material, bought in the market, relieved by scrolls of dull pink wool embroidered (almost a stitch at a time) in between jobs.  The dark stained “genuine antiques” or veritables imitations (as I once saw them described in a French shop) looked rather well against this background; and a tremendous house-warming took place to celebrate the occasion.

No. 30 Field hospital arrived one day straight from Sicily, where it had apparently been sitting ever since the war, awaiting casualties.

As there seemed no prospect of any being sent, they were ordered to France, and took up their quarters on a sandy waste near the French coastal forts.  The orderlies had picked up quite a lot of Italian during their sojourn and were never tired of describing the wonderful sights they had seen.

While waiting for patients there one day, a corporal informed me that on the return journey they had “passed the volcano Etna, in rupture!”

A great many troops came to a rest camp near us, and I always feel that “Tuppence’s” disappearance was due to them.  He would be friendly with complete strangers, and several times had come in minus his collar (stolen by French urchins, I supposed).  I had just bought his fourth, and rather lost heart when he turned up the same evening without it once more.  Work was pouring in just then, and I would sometimes be out all day.  When last I saw him he was playing happily with Nellie, another terrier belonging to a man at the Casino,